UX News
A look at what's going on in the field of user experience.
The AI era needs Sigma (Σ) shaped designers (Not T or π)
, UX Collective - Medium
For years, design and tech teams have relied on shape metaphors to describe expertise. We had T-shaped people (one deep skill, broad…
The stories that keep us obedient
, UX Collective - Medium
James Baldwin on protection, avoidance, and the limits we inherit.James BaldwinWhat’s the balance between protection and control?
Early on, the difference is hard to see. A rule tightens, choices narrow, and it still feels like someone watching out for us. But the moment we’re told which questions are acceptable, the story stops being something we believe and becomes something we’re permitted to follow.
The anatomy of product discovery judgment
, UX Collective - Medium
The 19 critical decision moments where human judgment determines whether teams build the right things.Diagram created by author using Google Gemini AI text-to-image creatorI watched a talented software team present three major features they’d shipped on time, hitting all velocity metrics. When I asked, “What problem do these features solve?” silence followed. They could describe what they’d built and how they'd built it. But they couldn’t articulate why any of it mattered to customers.
It wasn’t incompetence, but rather a loss of clarity in the rush to deliver — a failure of judgment, not execution. I’ve been in that room before — on the other side. I’ve watched teams I led ship features that solved problems no one had previously identified. The hard lesson: executing speed without clear judgment gets you to failure faster. Of course, timely execution remains vital, but discovery judgment has become the actual constraint.
What Gemini 3 Pro Changes About Product Design
, UX Planet - Medium
Last Tuesday, I watched a designer at a design tools company sketch a FigJam interface on paper, snap a photo, and ask an AI model to build it. Twelve seconds later, they had a working prototype with animations, interactive components, and proper design system implementation. No mockups. No handoff documentation. Just a sketch and a conversation.
This wasn’t science fiction. It was Gemini 3 Pro, and it’s forcing us to rethink what “design” actually means.
TaxBuddy, Making Taxes Feel Less Taxing
, UX Planet - Medium
Simplifying financial complexity through intuitive UX and Visual Design.Project SummaryWhen we first began working on TaxBuddy, the goal was simple — to make the process of filing taxes feel less intimidating for everyday users. But soon, we realized the real challenge wasn’t just about simplifying steps, it was about building trust through design. I worked on this project alongside a small team at Monsoonfish Design Studio that included Poorva Ketkar and Subham Saurabh along with two design managers, and it instantly brings back memories of the long hours we spent refining every detail. While we collaborated closely on research and problem solving, my main focus was on UI and visual design. I wanted to create an interface that looked clear, approachable, and was easy to navigate.
I wanted every screen to feel like a quiet reassurance in a world full of tax jargon and confusion.The design leaned on clear and simple UX copy, and thoughtful hierarchy to guide users without overwhelming them. This project taught me how much visual design can influence how users feel and not just how they interact. Turning complex data into something simple, familiar, and trustworthy became the heart of our approach.
Overcoming Silos
, UX Planet - Medium
One of the first articles I wrote was on the topic of collaboration (you can read it here). That was almost 10 years ago. At the time I had been working in the Technology/Software world for 5 years, after a stint doing Interaction/UI/UX work in agencies. While agency work has a lot of positive aspects to it, I didn’t think I was a good fit for it. I found the relationship and ultimately sense of ownership with a solution very fleeting, since in essence the engagement with the client had a time stamp on it, after which you simply started working on something else. For some Design professionals, that’s what they crave the most: diversity of projects, jumping around from challenge to challenge. Personally, I’ve always preferred to have a sense of continued storytelling, meaning, launching a product to market doesn’t close that narrative, quite the opposite. It opens a new chapter, where there’s constant engagement with clients, and where the utilization of the product produces findings that are fundamental for the growth of that solution and the business that is behind it. The opportunities to take something from 0 to 1 are immense, and taking something from 1 to infinity are even bigger. It all depends on vision, strategy, and much like the title states, overcoming silos. I know these past sentences have been a very run around way for me to come to the topic of this article, which is actually a reflection on the silos that I’ve always witnessed when working in the Technology world, and how even in 2025 they are still very much felt, even if everyone is betting that AI will revolutionize how we work and collaborate (and that may well be the case, but probably not in the way everyone thinks). Here’s what my experience in the field has taught me, and that hopefully I can synthesize in this brief article.
Silos are the default operational process. Everyone wants to stay in their lane, if we adopt a racing metaphor. Meaning, everyone working in Technology and delivering solid product solutions wants to do well, have good performance evaluations, and that typically means excelling at what they do, with their teams, in their own ecosystem/microcosms. For all the articles, training, Design Thinking conferences that exist, it’s always been surprising to me how easy it is for people who work in Software development to quickly fall back on archaic view points of how these solutions should be delivered. By that I mean, Product Ownership conceives a strategy, writes users stories and a builds a roadmap, Design crafts the information architecture and UI, and Development receives all the previous chapters and goes about implementing everything according to what is outlined. This waterfall process of building solutions, is something that many people in the field dismiss as something of the past, but in all the years I’ve been working in this universe, it seems to be the process that is always present. And it’s easy to understand why: it allows for everyone to have a sense of their scope of responsibilities, all actions follow a logical approach, and everyone is a master of their own domain/craft. The problem as it turns out is that this process is rigid, doesn’t take into account enough research, and removes partners from a true connection with their users/clients. Design Thinking hasn’t been a methodology/approach whose goal is solely to introduce more research and awareness of clients’ expectations and needs: it has been in essence a way to humanize the process, and bring more collaboration between all teams. Terminology such as “synergy” and “user centric” are brandished around continuously, firstly because they sound great, and it has become a de facto pitch for any consulting firm selling Design services, but what it actually surfaces, is the underlying aspects that products resonate further, produce more engagement and adoption, when there is indeed stronger collaboration between teams, when more research his leveraged, and where there’s flexibility which allows teams to quickly share their learnings and implement sound decisioning based on those data points. This rapid decisioning process can’t be implemented when silos exist: these are per default a way to keep teams in their own compartments. And that invariably is a recipe for frustration.
Case study: Improving home office experience
, UX Planet - Medium
source: freepikHey, Thanks for landing here, wish you an interesting & informative read!
This is a “Design Thinking” based case study. To enhance the Home Office experience of target users, before we hop into how I did it, let's have a glimpse of what exactly Design Thinking is.
Silicon clay: how AI is reshaping UX design
, UX Collective - Medium
What do the last five years of academic research tell us about how design is changing?AI is reshaping the UX practitioner. Photo by Elijah CrouchIt would be something of an understatement to say AI has impacted the world of UX design.
But how, exactly, has it affected UX and its practitioners?
What Is the Difference Between Ease and Satisfaction?
, MeasuringU
“Satisfaction” is used rather broadly in vernacular speech.
We can feel satisfied with a meal, a movie, or a moment.
Rake Weighting: How to Weight Survey Data with Multiple Variables
, MeasuringU
Having a representative sample is ideal when making inferences about your customer or user population. In practice, it can be difficult to recruit the right proportion of respondents, leaving your sample out of balance with the population.
One way to adjust for being off balance is to weight the data you collected to get the sample back into proportion with the population percentages (such as for variables like age, geographic region, or experience levels).
